


Time after time

by Yuu_chi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Continuous Reincarnation, Ereri Week 2015, Happy Ending, M/M, Reincarnation, Soulmates prompt, brief suicide mention, minor gore, no literally, there's a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 08:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4093795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi dies - and then he lives. </p><p>Or; Levi spends all his lifetimes waiting for Eren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time after time

Levi is forty-one when he dies, and it’s just as bloody and lonely as he’d anticipated.

There’s rain and shouting and everything is pitching black-white- _black_ in his vision. One of the kids is gone too, he can’t tell which, but there had been a decidedly unpleasant squishing sound from the direction of their squad. He’d be more mad about that if he could _breathe_.

“ _Captain_ ,” Eren screams from somewhere out in the darkness.

 _I’m fine_ , he tries to say, but the words cough and splutter and there’s something wet and runny tracking down from the corner of his mouth.

 _Fuck_ , Levi thinks, and for one gorgeous second he sees a flash of green-blue-gold and feels sword-roughened fingertips that can’t possibly be real against his cheek.

He dies thinking of Eren Jaeger.

It’s par for the course, really.

.

It takes Levi two more lifetimes to figure out what’s happening.

Reincarnation, it seems, is quite a confusing business.

He’s in his third go-around by the time he puts the pieces together and living in a dirty old hovel out the back of a village he’s no longer welcome in because apparently it’s terribly frightening for the locals when he slips between ancient languages on the bad days when he can’t focus.

To be fair, at this point he has a hundred-odd years of nonconsecutive life jammed up in his head, it’s not exactly his fault he can hardly keep timelines straight.

He spends a dizzy decade or so being catapulted around his own mind as he tries to sort out the science of what’s happening to him. He remembers being young and old and then young and then old _and then young and then old_. He remembers dying, dying, dying. He remembers smiles and frowns and fire and walls and the sharp whistle of maneuver gear and he remembers –

 _Eren_.

The memories of Eren are so earth shatteringly strong that when they keep barreling back to him he suffers something of a breakdown and spends a week in bed convulsing through a maelstrom of images and sounds that rip him a hundred years into the past.

_Eren’s eyes the first time he saw him in that cell, terrifying and beautiful and – the feel of his nose breaking beneath his knee in the courtroom as he beats Eren half to death – riding beside him outside the walls, the awe in Eren’s face, so childish and innocent and – Eren as a titan screaming at the sky, black hair and black eyes – Eren’s fingers on his face, smile against his lips – in his bed, hands at Levi’s sides, sweating and moaning and flushed – the last time he saw him, face terrified and white and reaching for him as Levi fell from the sky and –_

By the time Levi can gasp himself back to clarity fever has already set in.

He dies for the third time, once again, thinking of Eren Jaeger.

.

The next time Levi reincarnates he’s more prepared.

It’s been a couple dozen years since his last death – Levi’s not sure on the specifics of this whole cycle thing; there’s no pattern or rhyme in when or  where he seems to turn up again – and life is depressingly very much the same.

It’s fine though. Levi knows what to do, how to play his cards.

He spends ten years of this lifetime looking for Eren; walks from village to village searching for something, _anything_ , that makes him think of green eyes and dark hair and a smile that makes his bones hot.

He knows he’ll recognize Eren when he sees him, he just _knows_.

He goes to sleep one night tucked away at the base of a muddy tree in-between villages and dreams of their first kiss; Eren’s skin red and hot beneath Levi’s hands and the way they were both shaking and terrified despite wanting it so badly it was causing them physical pain.

When he wakes up again –

Well, he doesn’t.

It’s his next life. Exposure or animals or something got him in his sleep.

.

Levi’s fifth life is a complete waste.

He breaks his record and lives until he’s fifty though, which is something, but thirty-seven years of searching for Eren gives him nothing but a foot that’s missing three toes from too much walking and a back that hobbles him until he can’t search anymore.

He goes in his sleep again. It should be the most peaceful death he’s had yet.

It’s not.

.

He misses fifty years this time. The High Middle Ages. Everybody is at war with each other.

By the time he’s old enough and remembered enough to start his search again he doesn’t get the chance.

He’s caught up in some fourth crusade drama or another – he’s not sure of the specifics; Levi really stopped paying attention to what was going on around him four lifetimes ago – and cops a delightful arrow to the knee for his trouble.

(a long time in history later there’s a running joke about that – Levi never finds it funny.)

It gets infected.

That’s fine. Levi’s dealt with infected wounds before. Fuck, if it gets him out of all this war drama, Levi will delightfully take as many arrows to non-necessary extremities as needed.

It’s less fine when it gets amputated; he spends the whole surgery screaming until he’s coughing up blood and bile, begging for them to just fucking cut his head off instead, it’d be easier, less painful, he can come back from that, he can’t from this, he needs to keep going, moving forward _, he has to find Eren, he has to find Eren, he has to –_

He passes out.

Disappointingly, he wakes up.

“It went okay,” the makeshift surgeon tells him with unpleasant bits of Levi’s tattered flesh still on his apron. “You’ll live.”

There’s not yet enough words in the human language to express what Levi spends the night yelling at the top of his lungs, but goddamnit, he _tries_.

His search for Eren is over. If he’s out there somewhere in this lifetime, Levi can’t find him. Not like this.

There’s a nasty looking surgical blade that’s been left by his bedside. Levi doesn’t even hesitate when he reaches for it.

It’s the first time he kills himself. It’s not the last.

.

The Black Death rolls around and everything is hell. It’s horrific in a way Levi feels like he should be more acquainted with by now. He’s lived through enough terror and nightmares to know how this goes.

People are dying everywhere and the streets and cities smell like soot and death; smoky charred flesh and just the undercurrent of hopelessness that taints the air and everything around it. It’s a massacre, really, but without the privilege of having a single soul to pin it to.

Levi thinks of a half dozen lifetimes of searching for Eren – of trying to find what feels like half his soul.

Blameless pain is something he’s more than a little familiar with.

 _Just this once_ , he says to himself one day when he can’t take all the dying anymore _, I can give up one lifetime._

He takes up being plague doctor because death has less meaning to Levi than to others. It’s messy and downright terrifying. Levi has stood before Titans and men and taken his own life. He’s done a lot of horrifying things, has been scared so hard he couldn’t even breathe; and yet this is just as scary as that.

Levi dedicates himself to helping the victims, burying and burning bodies, returning the respectful yet terrified nods of the lucky few who escape the infection when he’s on the road between houses.

It’s only a matter of time until the plague takes him too. Everybody knows it.

Eren would understand that he needed to do this. That he couldn’t just sit back and let the world work itself around him this time. If Eren was out there somewhere too, Levi thinks that he’d be doing this exact same thing himself.

Eren was that kind of selfless; the greater good before himself, always and forever. No self-preservation at all because he considered himself so small in a world so big.

Levi always privately disagreed. To Levi, Eren was the biggest and brightest thing he’d ever seen. He misses him like his lungs miss air sometimes. It’s been so long and Levi has been so empty and everything in him itches to find Eren – _find Eren, find Eren, find Eren_ – but Eren has never been that easy, that simple.

One lifetime. Levi can wait one more lifetime before he searches again.

The plague gets worse.

He’s in a house one day to pick up some bodies for burning. All around him are infected – dying or dead – slumped up against walls or on thin, scraggly floor blankets. It’s a place for those who are done, where people go when there’s no hope anymore.

Out of the corner of his eye, Levi sees green.

Everything around him stops – noisy death rattles; the wafts of herbs and smoke; the bitter light of candles on the moss-rotted floor – and Levi turns.

There’s a kid tossed up against the corner by the door; thin and pale and dying.

He looks up at Levi and his eyes are brown, dark and sallow and bloodshot, but –

Levi sees green – sees his hands on Eren’s skin, Eren’s smile, the white flash of his teeth to the dark of his skin, the soft flick of his tongue at his lips, the tilt of his neck, the sweep of his hair, _Eren, Eren, Eren_.

The kid smiles at him.

And then his eyes close.

They don’t open again.

.

The sixteenth century comes and goes. Nothing of note happens.

Well, plenty of note happens, Levi supposes. Just not to him. He spends two lifetimes in it; dies young in both.

He spends the first one near frantically searching for Eren, haunted by the brief glimmer he’d seen of the kid by the door with the brown eyes and pale skin who had smiled at him with the same tilt to his mouth and yearning in his eyes and Levi – he _can’t_.

He dies and he doesn’t know how.

He spends the second lifetime grief crazed and inconsolable. He’s locked up at one point or another. Eventually he bites his own tongue off and chokes to death.

It’s unpleasant and painful.

Levi is more than used to it by now.

.

The 1600’s are probably his worst lives yet. He manages to get executed for witchcraft three times. He can’t even blame them for it, really, because Levi is as strange as they come.

They’re not really wrong either. Levi doesn’t know if its witchcraft or science or some kind of punishment that has him walking the earth time after time after time, but it’s unnatural.

His memories are slipping lately; lives blurring together. He talks to people who aren’t there, who have been dead for longer than everybody else has been alive; laughs when he should cry and cries when he should laugh.

He sees Eren everywhere. He’s in the trees when Levi is walking, in the well when he’s drinking, in the giggles of children, the shouts of adults, in his head, his dreams, _Eren, Eren, Eren._

Levi is aware he’s losing it, should have learnt after the first time he was burnt at the fucking stake to keep himself together, but he just – he can’t.

He’s terrified. He’s been through war and plague and death and _he is terrified._

He’s too old – so, so old – and he can’t do this anymore. He can’t tell what he’s lived through and what he’s imagined, what is here and now and there and then.

There are nights he spends awake and shaking because he can’t tell if the ghostly feel of Eren’s skin beneath his fingers is a memory of a dream. Had they really kissed like that? Had their first time really been in Eren’s cell with the whisper of candlewax melting and the slither of sheets under his skin? How had he touched Eren before? _Had he touched Eren before?_

 _No_ , he tells himself when he finally breaks and is dragged to the courthouse to be burnt again, _Eren is real; what you had was real._

_Eren is your everything._

_You will find him._

_You. Will. Find. Him._

.

Levi has lost track of his lifetimes when he realizes he can no longer remember what Eren looks like.

.

He skips an entire two centuries.

The gaps between his reincarnations are getting longer. Like there’s a part of him that’s dying inside in a way that doesn’t involve blood or body.

Something inside Levi is giving up.

He loves Eren, but it’s all he can do these days to cling to his name.

_You’re Levi Ackerman, and you love Eren Jaeger. Eren is your everything – you have waited a long time, and someday you will find him._

He tells himself that every night, every time he opens his eyes. He recites it like a mantra when he’s given an arranged marriage to a beautiful noble who smiles so sweetly at him when he takes her hand over the altar.

They have a nice, uncomplicated relationship. No children, because Levi had asked not to. She loves him. Levi never loves her.

She dies peacefully in her sleep when they’re going gray.

Levi feels nothing.

(he follows her two weeks later with poison on his tongue and icy cold relief at his heart.)

.

Levi goes to war again; it’s funny how centuries whirl on by and yet mankind learns absolutely nothing.

He’s tired of this; of opening his eyes to find some new fresh horror awaiting him; of growing older and older while Eren stays young and beautiful at the back of his head.

He’s _tired_.

They’re ambushed on what should be recon and Levi sees so much red that he doubts he’ll ever see any other colour again.

He goes down with a bullet up in his chest and his mouth tastes like dirt and blood.

Somebody shouts something but it’s in German and Levi’s mind is already going hazy and he swears he can feel the universe slithering inside to pull him away, to cradle him up amongst the stars and hold him there until he’s ready to come back down again.

Somebody says his name –

Not whatever label he’s wearing in this time period; but his _name_.

Levi’s eyes fly open and there’s no more red, just _green_.

He’d recognize those eyes anywhere.

 _Eren_ , he thinks.

“Captain,” Eren says, and then: “ _Levi_.”

He’s as white as the last time Levi saw him; slumped in the plague house, below Levi on the ground as his maneuver gear snapped and he fell.

_I’ve missed you, god I’ve missed you._

Eren’s holding his hand when Levi’s eyes close.

.

The world is a cosmic joke – it gives him Eren only when he can’t have him, leaves them dying in each other’s arms so that all they have to pull them through the dragging centuries is blood on their fingertips and the hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll see each other again.

It’d be enough to send him off the deep end again if Levi hadn’t wasted four or five lifetimes on that already.

The twenty-first century is … peaceful.

There’s still death and war and terror but nobody expects Levi to be doing anything about it. For the first time in his many, many lives, Levi _lives_.

There’s a lot of nice technological advancements Levi never would have thought possible. When Levi is eleven he’s actually able to sit down and… _google_ reincarnation.

He hasn’t had this kind of information at his fingertips since the library of Alexandria.

Still, for all its benefits, it’s just as empty as the other timeplaces Levi has lived through.

He’d left Eren by the roadside holding his dead body fifty years ago and there’s no guarantee they’ll see each other in this peaceful interlude. Next time Levi opens his eyes the world could be molten lead and rock.

He might not even open his eyes again. Maybe time will stop. Maybe Eren will go.

When Levi is nineteen his parents decide he needs therapy.

They’re not wrong really. Levi is about as traumatized as they come at this point. They’ve raised a child who was never a child, and they’ve noticed a thing or two along the way.

He’d told them he wanted to go ‘find himself’ after a year of college.

(It was funny how it was the complete and total truth too; Eren was his other half, the piece of him missing, and Levi had been looking for a very, very long time.)

“You can go,” his mother had said, “so long as I know you’re coming back.”

So: therapy.

Levi figures if he’s lived through dying, he can live through this.

He goes through the psychological services associated with his college. It’s mostly staffed by young, underpaid, underworked interns seeking to bump up their office hours and Levi figures somebody should probably get some benefit out of it.

Levi’s not denying there’s something seriously fucked up with him; he’s just denying that there’s anybody on this earth who could help him.

It’s a clear day out when he heads to his first appointment; blue sky, and quiet streets and Levi finds himself watching the cars that go by, the people that chatter on as they pass, the store fronts that glitter in the sun.

It’s calm and contented and he’s seen it all before; has watched buildings spring to life and crumple, flowers bud and furl, kings rise and fall; grow, linger, burn, live, _die_.

He’s seen so much and so little and everything and nothing and Levi wonders, sometimes, if this is a trade-off; if this is what he gets instead of a life with Eren.

He wishes somebody had asked; he would have chosen Eren every time.

That’s the world for you – that giant, cosmic joke.

The building for his appointment is small and empty when he arrives and Levi spends a few careless moments strolling about, tapping on paintings that are offensively historically inaccurate and trying to shake off something that is settling at the pit of his stomach.

Nerves, he tells himself, because last time he’d been to somebody about his mental state they’d locked him up in an asylum.

Bad experiences and all that.

There’s a click from the reception area and Levi looks up just in time to see somebody crane their head out the door. His vision is bad in this body, so Levi can’t see them too clearly from where he’s standing but they seem about as young as him.

“You’re here for your three o’clock appointment, right?”

There’s something familiar in the voice that Levi can’t place, but he pushes the feeling down with a nonchalant shrug.

His therapist hums a little and turns over something on his clipboard before beckoning him in.

Levi follows after him and takes care to shut the door loudly behind them.

There’s two empty seats facing each other and Levi takes one without a second thought, watches as his therapist paces around to take the other, face still firmly implanted in his notes as he nods at himself thoughtfully.

Levi could probably take a guess what’s in there. Depressive episodes, a few brief mentions from his childhood psychiatrist about some truths Levi might have spoken of when his childhood neurobiology hadn’t quite caught up with his adult mind.

“So,” the therapist says, “it says here when you were younger you had some delusions?”

Again, Levi shrugs. He’d anticipated this much, really.

“Do you mind if I ask you about them?”

Levi looks at the ceiling for a moment and smiles. “Oh, just the usual stuff.”

There’s the shuffle of pages turning. “And what would that be?”

Levi’s grin widens. “I thought I’d been reincarnated.”

The shuffling stops. Levi looks away from the ceiling.

His therapist is looking at him.

And Levi’s looking at _him_.

He’s skin is paler than Levi’s ever seen it, and his eyes are blue and his hair is fucking _red_ but –

Levi can’t breathe. He’s swimming in the ocean of those eyes.

_He sees green._

“Levi,” Eren says, and he breathes it like gas, like Levi is a match lighting the air in front of them on fire.

Levi’s been buried and burnt and shot and stabbed and alive and dead and he’s felt so, so much but never _this_.

He’s waiting for the drop – for the gunshot or blood, for one of them to close their eyes and not open them again.

Eren’s eyes do not close.

And Levi – for the first time in a thousand years, breathes.

.

Levi elopes with Eren to France.

It’s as hilarious as it sounds. His parents are spitting mad, make a lot of noise about how Eren was supposed to fix him not _seduce_ him. Eren laughs himself to tears; it’s probably not as funny as they make it out to be, but they’re both a little unhinged at this point.

Eren in this body is barely taller than Levi; pale freckle-smeared skin and an Irish accent that makes Levi shiver. His fingers are narrow, hands big, and he touches Levi like he’s trying to make up for all the times they’d come so close.

And Levi loves him – he loves him like he’s loved him for all his lifetimes.

He’s died a hundred deaths waiting for Eren Jaeger.

They lie in bed one night and Levi traces out the scars he could remember him having, feels out the new ones that have taken their places, presses his lips to the skin over his heart and feels the sweet beat it against his mouth. 

He’s alive. _They’re_ alive.

One day, much later, they won’t be; they’ll pass off into the stars to wait.

And Levi will find him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's back just in time to throw out a fic for the last day of Ereri week before sinking back into seclusion?


End file.
